TheQuarantinian

TheQuarantinian t1_jeh0tko wrote

IBM found out the hard way that exclusive tie-in was against the law. Once upon a time they tried to force only IBM brand punch cards to be used with their machines, but International Business Machines Corp. v. United States, 298 U.S. 131 (1936) put a stop to that.

So imagine that GM says "you can buy this car with remote start, but you can only use said feature if you also purchase a subscription to GMremote. And using DMCA protections we will block you from using an aftermarket remote starter.

That probably wouldn't fly.

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TheQuarantinian t1_jcpol2m wrote

Amazon et al should start saying "if you have a locked gate / uncontrolled dog in the yard we won't deliver," then enforce the rule. Shoppers need amazon a lot more than amazon needs them.

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TheQuarantinian t1_jcpcx2m wrote

Every year 70,000 people go to the emergency room because of a skateboarding accident.

Every year 580,000 for bike accidents, 900 deaths.

500 annual injuries from lawn darts result in three federal bans under threat of prison and perpetual cultural memory that they are the deadliest and most dangerous thing ever sold.

What are the two numbers such that:

X: if this many people are injured/killed the thing is too dangerous to sell and must be banned

Y: if this many people are injured/killed it is clearly too popular/profitable to ban

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TheQuarantinian t1_jcp6z8p wrote

I was at poverty point, probably the only time in my life I'll ever go there. I was trying to take it all in, but some twit was filling the sky with rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr to shoot a video he'll probably never watch.

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TheQuarantinian t1_j8r4tvn wrote

Not like airlines or gas stations - you generally don't see price wars for a couple of reasons:

  1. You can't make more. You have only one shot to sell that specific lot
  2. Real estate opportunities are drying up: you'll probably never get another chance to build another sub in that division again unless you can do a lot of demolition
  3. If demand falls you just stop building and wait. Land doesn't expire or go out of style
  4. If you sell a unit for 100,000 then sell the one next door for 80,000 you affect the value of the first one and establish a trend that affects the value of the third one as fewer people want to buy in a neighborhood where prices are falling. Again, the best option is to just stop building rather than cutting prices. There are some exceptions here, mainly multi unit buildings where you have to pay for ongoing maintenance if the unit is occupied or not, but the are a bunch of other differences there.
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TheQuarantinian t1_j8pmrwp wrote

The competition still won't. They'd be dumb not to.

You receive two job offers, both paying 100,000/yr. You like both equally, benefits are the same, everything is identical except one requires you to spend $10,000/yr on transportation and parking and the other $1,000. Do I need to ask if you will accept the one with lower costs and tell them your labor is worth $9,000/year less?

Unless the motivation and goal is to sell cheaper houses the developer won't. And there isn't really any competition - it isn't like a restaurant or a shirt,there is one lot for sale just as there is only one year of your time for sale.

If the builder can sell the house for a million he will sell it for a million if he has to pay a plumber or not. And why wouldn't he?

Now if there are two identical units side by side and one needed a number and the other not and only one buyer then that's different. But when there is only one developer building every house in a 50 acre subdivision or condo highrise then they will minimize expense but maximize sale value wherever possible.

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TheQuarantinian t1_j743bf7 wrote

From a story on DNYUZ:

> FRISCO, Colo. — On a recent sunny Sunday morning, following a night of fluffy snowfall, tens of thousands of skiers flocked to the resorts of Summit County. Just minutes after the lift lines opened, sirens began blaring in the 911 emergency service center, where four staff members were taking calls and dispatching help.

> Each jarring alert was a new incoming call, heralding a possible car crash, heart attack or other life-threatening situation. Often, the phone operators heard a chilling sound at the far end of the line: silence, perhaps from a caller too incapacitated to respond.

> At 9:07 a.m., one dispatcher, Eric Betts, responded to such a call. From the map on one of the seven monitors on his desk, he could see that the distress call originated from a slope at the Arapahoe Basin Ski Area. Mr. Betts tried calling back. A man picked up.

> “Do you have an emergency?” Mr. Betts asked. No, the man said, he was skiing — safely, happily, unharmed. Slightly annoyed, he added, “For the last three days, my watch has been dialing 911.”

> Winter has brought a decent amount of snowfall to the region’s ski resorts, and with it an avalanche of false emergency calls. Virtually all of them have been placed by Apple Watches or iPhone 14s under the mistaken impression that their owners have been debilitated in collisions.

> “My whole day is managing crash notifications,” said Trina Dummer, interim director of Summit County’s emergency services, which received 185 such calls in the week from Jan. 13 to Jan. 22. (In winters past, the typical call volume on a busy day was roughly half that.) Ms. Dummer said that the onslaught was threatening to desensitize dispatchers and divert limited resources from true emergencies.

> Just before noon, Mark Watson, a sergeant with the sheriff’s office, walked into the dispatch room looking glum. “This is not a good day,” he said.

> Ordinarily, he had other duties, including patrolling the backcountry on snowmobile, but the ghost calls had kept him at his desk. Whenever the 911 operators were unable to reach the owner of the watch or phone, the case was referred to Sergeant Watson, who would try calling and sending a text; if he didn’t hear back, he forwarded the issue to the ski patrol.

> So far that day, Sergeant Watson had fielded seven referrals from 911, four of which he forwarded to the ski patrol. He turned to Ms. Dummer: How many crash-detection calls had come in overall? Eleven, she said, out of 30 calls total.

First off, if your watch has been repeatedly making false calls to 911 for three days then take off the watch or turn it off. You KNOW it is making bogus calls, after the first two or three it is time to start issuing fines.

Second, the obvious reaction is already happening:

> In Grand County, home to a busy mountain called Winter Park, Sheriff Brett Schroetlin decided in late December to devote less attention to the crash-detection calls. Now if a 911 operator receives one from the slopes and no one is on the other end of the line, they know to ignore the call; no more referrals or follow-ups. None of the ghost calls so far have been real emergencies, Sheriff Schroetlin reasoned, and he couldn’t afford to waste limited resources. Besides, he said, there was a better technology: human beings.

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TheQuarantinian t1_j6ysk4f wrote

>Millions of people in the US hike and camp in areas without cell service every year.

Many of whom shouldn't.

When things like the SPOT came out a bunch of people who had no business being in the back country went to the back country with the attitude of "and if I get into trouble I can press this 911 button". Then started pressing the button to order hot chocolate, because their trail guide was snoring, or because they started a six hour hike at 3pm in shorts and without water and then realized that they were smrt enough to have the insta 911 button.

> Saying they should all pay hundreds of dollars a year for an inreach is ridiculous.

PLBs require no subscription.

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TheQuarantinian t1_j1rogra wrote

>It does not matter if Palestinians did not have a national identity before the 1800s.

Then the nation cannot have a claim. That simple.

> What matters is that there were people there in that area that were kicked out of their homes

Like the Jews. But according to you they don't matter because Jewish.

> Jews and Christians and Muslims were neighbors and brothers.

And now the militant factions of one of those wants to commit genocide and you support them.

>The UN, a bunch of white colonizing nations

Like the Syrian Arab Republic (charter member, but you didn't know that).

>It doesn’t matter who lived on that land 2000, 3000, however many years ago. You cannot go to someone’s home and say my ancestors lived here 3000 years ago so I’m taking it back now.

What is the statute of limitations?

> If that was the case for even 400 years ago, America wouldn’t be a country.

Nothing would be a country because everything has been captured by somebody at some point.

> Now, they collectively punish all Palestinians living in Gaza with a blockade that controls water, electricity, construction materials, access to their air and sea space, natural resources, etc.

Which would stop at any time with a pro.ise to stop trying to exterminate the Jews and punish people who try instead of affording them nation hero status.

> 57% of Gaza children are anemic and 90% of the water is unsafe to drink. You’re quick to brush this off as a failed gamble, but it is a cold and calculated move.

Easy fix. They stop advocating genocide and figure out a way to share the region, problem solved. Launching rockets at civilians does not make them good guys, nor does it encourage cooperation.

> They even calculated the caloric intake required to keep people on the brink of starvation but wouldn’t die.

Citation needed. This is Alex Jones level of conspiracy nutzo-ness.

In 2008 Israel set to ensure just under 2,300 calories/day per person which is on the brink of starvation for nobody.

> “The idea is to put the Palestinians 2008a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

Who are you quoting? And since when is 2,279 calories a diet?

>These are not actions that the good guy takes.

Do I need to link to videos of Palestinian actions and let you avoid having to ignore them because they are indefensible?

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TheQuarantinian t1_j1py5vv wrote

> Ok first of all, if Israel doesn’t want Islamic fundamentalists in power, it shouldn’t arm and fund them. That’s the only reason Hamas has any power in the first place.

Hamas was a gamble that Israel took decades ago. Israel screwed up. So what should the lesson be here? Should Israel never trust any Arabic groups again?

> In what sense did Israel not take the land by force?

Some history.

In 1947 the United Nations (the same organization that antisemetic groups rely on to support their anti-Israel position these days) passed a resolution calling for separate independent states for Jewish and Arab populations, with the city of Jerusalem held in an international trust since nobody could get along when it came to control of the city. Britain, anxious to maintain the status quo continued to arrest Jewish immigrants who were trying to enter the areas designated for them.

Arabic militants who were committed to hating the Jews until the end laid seige to the 100,000 Jewish people living in Jerusalem, killing anybody who attempted to bring them supplies (meanwhile, today, people who say that this kind of action is justified against Jewish people get irate when Jerusalem forces simple screen incoming shipments for bombs and rockets. One side definitely plays by different rules than the other.)

The British eventually left the area (keeping large numbers of Jewish immigrants in detention centers in Cyprus until the following year) and worked to set up an arms embargo against the fledgling Jewish state which was asking only for the right to live in a contiguous swath of territory and not be targeted for slaughter - again. Arab forces mustered 250,000 heavily armed fighters against a civilian population, relatively outgunned until Czechoslovakia broke the embargo and provided equipment to counter the British weaponry the Arab states had pointed at the new Israeli state.

After a month long truce brokered by the United Nations ran out, Arabic forces once again attempted to expel or kill all Jewish settlers in the area. Israel pushed back and started to capture territory that had been used to stage attacks against them. Later that year, Jordan annexed swaths of Palestine in an agreement that nobody except for the British accepted as valid.

In 1949 Israel signed ceasefire agreements with Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. Not formal peace treaties, they were maining "you stop trying to kill us and we'll stop shooting back" deals. There were no formally recognized international boundaries established, but rather what was essentially putting a line of tape on the floor saying "you stay on that side of the room, and we'll stay on this side".

Real history is a far cry different than your portrayal of "and they burst into the area with guns and just took everything they wanted".

> To say that Palestinians didn’t exist before the 1800s is an egregious lie.

Except they didn't". "Palestine". "Palestinian Arab". See how different terms are used? Why do you think that different terms are used? Perhaps could it be that they refer to different groups? People lived in the US Midwest 1,000 years ago. Did that make them American Midwesterners? No, no it did not.

"Palestine" as you are using it did not exist before the mid 1800s. It was not a unified people with their own identity. Want to talk about egregious lies? Let's start by your claim that Palestinians existed as a unique cultural agglomeration before that time.

> That region has historically been referred to as Palestine for millennia

You rather disingenuously leave out that the region had been home to Akkadians, Gutians, Elamites, and Amorites - none of which are Palestinans as used and understood today. Then the Semitic Hyksos people came (they weren't related to modern Palestinians either) and were driven out. Then Egypt took control of the territory. Then the Sea People (nobody know who they were) showed up and caused a bunch of problems - their victories might later have been claimed by Jewish groups, but there is nothing even close to a consensus on this.

At some point during the 10 year reign of Merenptah of Egypt (round 1210 BC) he wrote that "Israel had been devastated" in wars against Libya (who were allies of the Sea People), which is the first known external reference to Israel in the area, though it is unclear what "Israel" referred to - an ethnic group or tribe or minor independent or other state in the area.

By 1100BC and 1050BC Israel was firmly established in the region, with the splitting of the unified kingdom into the North and South (with the Southern kingdom centered in Jerusalem around 930BC).

The Assyrians (not modern Palestinians) took over the region around 720BC, but unable to defeat the Israeli capital of Jerusalem contented to making it a vassal state around 720BC.

They were then driven out by Babylonians around 600BC, who destroyed everything in the region including Solomon's Temple and took the remaining Jewish people into captivity, pulling them out of the region.

In the late 500s BC, Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonians and allowed the Jewish people to return to the region. (Still nobody from whom modern Palestinians can draw historical legitimacy, as if you cared.)

Then Persia fell to Alexander the Great, eventually the Maccabees revolved around 200 BC and formed what would be the last independent Jewish state in the region, until they were conquered by the Romans, with the Palestinina region being placed into Roman Judea by Agustus around 30 BC.

Romans destroyed Jerusalem around 70AD, a defeat of the Jewish people in the area by Lucius Quietus around 115 AD, the Bar-Kochba Revolt around 135AD during which Roman/Jewish fighting led to almost 600,000 Jewish deaths, after which Hadrian renamed the region Syria Palaestina specifically to insult the remnants of the Jewish people.

In the 300s Constantine the Great made the region a Christian land, and Muslim groups showed up in the mid 600s.

Flash to today, when you say "hey, the Arab Palestines were there first, no fair driving out people and capturing their lands, give them back! Oh, the Jews were there first and were driven out? Well, you can capture their lands and not give them back, the rules of fairness don't apply to them."

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TheQuarantinian t1_j1maja4 wrote

Jews are also not a monolith.

Israelis also don't have children's TV shows where they tell each other that killing Palestinians is a good thing, and that they should beat their faces until like look like a tomato.

Israel didn't take it by force. You really don't know your history.

And Jews were living there long before the Palestinians were, and there were non-Palestinians who were probably there before the Jews were.

Solomon's first temple was there in the 10th century BC. Palestinians as a people didn't exist until the mid 1800s, before which they considered themselves to be Palestinian Arabs, subjects of the Ottoman Empire.

Who was there first?

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